Issue 84 - Kellar trends

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Kellar trends

Not all of us get the opportunity to turn our hobby into something more serious, but Andreas Haller has managed it.

A policeman by profession,he fell in love with whisky a few years ago and since then has developed his hobby in to a thriving business specialising in independent bottlings of Scottish single malt.

Introduced to malt whisky by his cousin's wife a few years back, his interest was fired by several trips to visit distilleries in Scotland. And as his passion grew the logical next step seemed to be to start bringing special malts he discovered back to Germany for others to enjoy.

“It began because I used to meet my friend to drink whisky but often we would find that the local supermarket shelf had nothing new for us,”he recalls.“So we started to search for other sources to get our whisky. Then other people would ask me to help them get their favourite bottle of whisky.

Eventually it seemed logical to take the next step and open Der Whiskykellar. That was in 2002 and it's been a dream come true.” Haller continued his day job as a special policeman tracking down criminals on the run. He manages to keep the shop running by being very flexible with his time and devoting much free time and holidays to it.

Since that time Haller has built up a special working relationship with some suppliers, but he says: “Back in 2003 on one of my educational trips to Scotland my wife Katrin and I had a wonderful evening with Doug McIvor of Berry Bros & Rudd. He told us all...